engleski

Witch as a double Other, or Can people communicate with the witch?

The psychoanalytic dimensions of the construction of witches have not been taken into account in a systematic way, although (Croatian) witch-trial records and narratives about witches would allow such analyses. I will try to show the ways in which Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic categories can be used in reading narratives and oral stories about witches, and I will also use Julia Kristeva’s highly productive term of abjection (Powers of Horror). I will try to show that the witch (seen as the Lacanian Other) may be seen as the alter ego of men, resulting from the split of the Subject. The body – soul dichotomy can be thus seen as the difference between the little other (or the specular image) and the big Other, creating a space for communication which need not be supernatural, but is rather a communication between Nature and Culture or the Imaginary and the Symbolic registers, to use Lacan’s terminology. Our focus will be on the role of these notions in the community.

symbolic; imaginary; witch; psychoanalysis

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